Photo of the Week: "Grey Owl's Forest"

Poem of the Week:  "Grey Owl's Poem" by Gwendolyn MacEwen

from The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen.

Grey Owl's Poem

There is no chart of his movement through the borrowed forest,

A place so alien that all he could do with it

was pretend it was his own

And turn himself into an Indian, savage and lean,

A hunter of the forest's excellent green secret.

For all his movements through the forest were

In search of himself, in searc h of Archie Belaney,

a lone predator in London

Telling the very king:  I come in peace, brother.

(The princess thinking how alien he was, how fine.)

Stranger and stranger to return to the forest

With the beavers all laughing at him, baring

their crazy orange teeth

And the savage secret...if  there ever was one...

Never revealed to him.  Stranger and stranger to return to

The female forest, the fickle wind erasing his tracks,

The receding treeline, and the snowbanks moving and moving.